The Vasa Order of America: Its Role in the Swedish-American Community: 1896-1996

THE VASA ORDER OF AMERICA:: ITS MOLE IN THE SWEDISH-AMERICAN COMMUNITY: 1896-1996
HENRY HANSON
1
This year we have celebrated the 150th anniversary of the beginning of mass Swedish immigration to the United States and Canada. It is therefore appropriate that we note organizations and institutions which played an historical role in the Swedish-American community and facilitated the adaptation and assimilation of the immigrant into a new society and culture. It goes without saying that—although most of us have not directly experienced it—immigra­tion
was a traumatic experience.
Two institutions constituted the pillars that enabled the immigrant to cope with the problems and difficulties encountered in the new milieu. The first was the Church, primarily the Augustana Lutheran Synod but also including the Swedish Mission Covenant, the Baptists, Methodists, as well as the Scandinavian units of the Salvation Army. Except for the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Salvation Army units, the "Swedish" churches have merged with their American counterparts. The Augustana Lutheran Synod, by far the largest Swedish-American ecclesiastical body, became part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC) in 1962, which in turn expanded in 1987 to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) with about six million members, embracing all of the Lutheran persuasion except for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and some smaller groups.
The fraternal society constituted the second pillar. To a degree its role has not been fully recognized, in part because of the hostility between the churches and the fraternal societies. The Church in principle opposed secret societies with quasi-religious rituals. In addition it invariably regarded the social aspects of such societies as worldly if not downright sinful.
By 1880 the majority of newcoming Swedish immigrants were no longer family units as in the preceding decades but teenage boys and girls, the children of tenant farmers (torpare) and agricultural and industrial workers. These new immigrants gravitated in large numbers to the industrial cities of the Northeast and Middle West—at the same time the East Coast in particular was swarming with immigrants in increasing numbers from non-Nordic countries, from Southern and Eastern Europe. The boys in large numbers entered the building and mechanical trades and the girls, domestic service in the homes of well-to-do Yankees. Furthermore, many of the post-1880 immigrants came from a different Sweden and society than their predecessors who had settled for the most part in rural areas of the Middle West. These newcomers were influenced, at least some of them, by those liberal and socialist ideas, including anti-clericalism, which then were beginning to infiltrate Swedish society. As a consequence, many of them were less church-oriented than their predecessors had been. While the churches had established parishes and congregations in the cities of the Midwest and to an extent on the East Coast, they were more effective in the rural areas and small towns of the Midwest, where their congregations were the center of Swedish-American life—both religious and social. By the same token, one should not minimize the role urban churches played in the lives of single boys and girls.
The ethnic fraternal societies in the urban areas fulfilled two vital needs of the immigrants. On the one hand, in an era before the development of the welfare state with its economic benefits, the fraternal societies were mutual benefit organizations providing modest health and death subsidies to members in need. At the time of its fiftieth anniversary in 1946, VASA had provided some $7,408,000 in sick benefits and $1,828,990 in death benefits to its members. With the coming of the New Deal and later the Great Society—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Aid to Dependent Children, as well as the improved economic well-being of most Swedish Americans—the social welfare aspect of the individual lodge had become insignificant.
The ethnic fraternal society had another function—a social and recreational one. It is true that the parish church had a social role, providing a place where Swedish immigrants could gather, meet other Swedes, speak their own language with its beautiful, lilting accent without being regarded as "foreigners" or "greenhorns" by the Yankees and English-speaking immigrants such as the Irish. But the social life of the churches had a strong religious tone and in confor­mity
with the prevailing religious and moral atmosphere of the period, a narrow and frequently intolerant attitude towards numerous social activities such as dancing, card-playing, drama, and above all alcoholic beverages, even when consumed in moderation—all of which were regarded at the least as worldly and distracting, if not indeed as devices of the devil. In addition, the worship of the churches in those days had a stern, Spartan character. Even the Augustana Lutheran Synod, which because of its sense of history loyally adhered to the creeds, the liturgy and traditions of the historic Church, had a marked low-church, pietistic and puritan character. Everything was black, somber, and serious; and fire-and-brimstone not infrequently dominated the lengthy sermons. The lodge with its social activities—dances, plays, poetry, as well as secular music and song—filled a void in the hard lives of the immigrants and provided some color and ceremony and an atmosphere where the immigrants could continue their Old-World peasant (bonde) customs and "have a good time."
The VASA Order of America is the largest Swedish fraternal organization in the United States. It is probably the largest "Swedish" organization in America. It may be exceeded in numbers by the Evangelical Covenant Church, which has not merged with any American ecclesiastical body but which has increasingly become Americanized because of inter-marriage and evangelism and no longer regards itself as "Swedish."
VASA was not, however, the first Swedish fraternal organization in the United States. It was established in 1896 in New Haven, Connecticut. But previous to this, the Svithiod Order was organized in 1880 and the Viking Order, in 1890. These societies were largely confined to the Midwest, particularly Illinois, and never really attained a large or widespread membership, although they continue to exist. Actually the first Swedish secular organization on these shores was the Swedish Society of New York, established in 1836 and still in existence.
At the end of the 1880s there were in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania several independent local Swedish societies, loosely federated in "The Combined Scandinavian Society of America." It had made little progress and was disbanded at its meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1890. In 1895 several Swedish mutual benefit societies in Connecticut held exploratory meetings in New Haven and ultimately organized in 1896 what would become District Lodge No. 1 of the VASA Order of America. In 1897 a committee met to organize a "grand lodge," with national pretensions; but by that time only two lodges (Norden in Hartford and Kronan in Waterbury) of the six original local ones remained committed to establishing a national lodge. It seems that the dissenting local bodies feared that their financial resources would come under the control of the national organization. Nils Pearson of New Britain, Connecticut, born in this country to immigrant parents, became the first grand master and is regarded as the "grand old man" of the VASA Order of America because of his unrelenting determination to organize these local Swedish mutual benefit societies into a national organization and because of his resolute defense of the "Swedish" character of the new organization. In the following decade VASA spread beyond Connecti­cut
and by 1910 had some 10,000 members in six districts: Connecti­cut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Northern New England.
Around 1910 the Swedish immigrant community reached its peak. That year there were some 650,000 Swedish-born Americans; and the immigrant press—some sixty weekly newspapers and 230 biweekly or monthly publications—had a circulation of over 600,000. Fanned by the press and with charismatic leaders such as Johan Enander of Chicago, the Swedes and their children became conscious of their identity as a distinct "nationality," as Swedish Americans. In 1930 the Swedish element, both Swedish-born and their children, reached its zenith, close to 1,500,000. VASA also grew apace; in 1929 it had 72,000 members in seventeen districts and 438 local lodges.
In 1921 Helga Hoving, the Danish-born wife of Dr. Johannes Hoving—a Swedo-Finn and outspoken champion of "Swedish-ness"—recognized that children were the key to the future of VASA. She therefore organized the order's first "barnklubb" at St. Erik's Lodge in New York City as well as three "barnresor" (children's trips) to Sweden in 1924,1929, and 1934. And Dr. Hoving himself, realizing the value of establishing organizational ties with the homeland in order to foster greater pride among Swedish Americans in their ancestral homeland and to reinforce the Swedishness of VASA, took the initiative in establishing the order's first lodge in Sweden. This took place in Göteborg on the west coast, the second largest city in the country and the place from which a great majority of the emigrants had embarked for America.
Dramatic as the growth of VASA was, it is apparent that only a small fraction of the Swedish-American population actually belonged to a Swedish-American fraternal society of some kind—a liberal estimate of the total number is 100,000. In contrast, the Augustana Lutheran Synod, by far the largest and most influential Swedish-American institution, had 238,385 confirmed members in 1930. Estimates are that possibly about forty percent of the Swedish-American population had some contact with a Swedish-American church or religious organization.
With World War I and the anti-foreign hysteria of the early 1920s, use of the Swedish language began to decline. The Swedish-American churches, particularly the Augustana Synod, long a bastion of Swedish culture, began to go over to English in their religious services and Sunday schools in order to retain the loyalty and support of the younger generation, increasingly monolingual with only a rudimentary knowledge of Swedish. On the other hand, the local VASA lodges, particularly in the Northeast where the post-World-War-I immigrants tended to settle, remained faithful to the Swedish language in the conduct of their affairs. But even VASA had to recognize the inevitable trend towards English. In 1923 it gave local lodges permission to use the English language in their business meetings if the members so wished.
The Great Depression, which began in 1929, with its horrendous economic consequences (huge unemployment, reduced workweeks and wages) adversely affected VASA; and by 1934 its membership had declined from 72,000 to 57,000. Moreover, during the first half of the century and particularly after 1920, Swedish Americans and their children had been generally accepted by the "native" predominantly Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock, who recognized the basic similarities of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon values and preferred the Scandinavians to the hordes of Latin and Southern European Roman Catholics who simultaneously were inundating the United States. Swedish immi­grants
learned English relatively quickly and adapted with ease to the "American" way of life. In addition they were fervent Protestants and strongly anti-Roman Catholic, conscious of their heritage as heirs of the Thirty Years and the Polish wars.
In the aftermath of World War II, the suburbanization of America, and an expanding prosperous economy, the ethnic community eroded rapidly. The Augustana Lutheran Synod, long considered a bastion of Swedish culture, values, and identity, merged with the newly created Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1962, along with the Finns, some Danes, and many of the Americans of German background. In addition
b
y this time the Swedes and particularly their American-born generations had to a large degree "achieved" the American dream by entering the professions, rising in the business and corporate worlds to high position and finally intermarrying with native Protestant Americans. With post-war prosperity and such developments as health insurance, the mutual benefit aspect of the order's function diminished in importance.
2
Had VASA now fulfilled its destiny and would it slowly fade away into the shadows of history?
Ethnic consciousness was to experience a revival among most groups and nationalities in America during the 1960s. Perhaps this was in part a reaction to the "black is beautiful" thrust of the race question. But it also stemmed from the impact of views prevalent among many sociologists and historians of immigration, of the mosaic theory of ethnicity on public attitudes: Immigrants were not to be persuaded and dragooned into discarding their ethnic traditions in order to become "English-speaking Americans" but rather were encouraged to retain their ethnic identity; American society would assume the form of a vast mosaic rather than a melting pot. At any rate the third and fourth generations, securely integrated into American society, no longer half ashamed of their grandparents' lilting accents and such customs as "lutfisk" at Christmas, began to develop an interest in their roots and in the achievements of their forebears in America.
Under the pressure of these social and demographic factors and concerned about the marginal interest among its young people in the lodges and their activities, VASA slowly began to alter its character. Already in 1954 the order had expanded eligibility for membership to the other Scandinavian peoples and spouses. Now it began gradually to transform itself into a "heritage" society—to make Americans with Swedish or Nordic roots more conscious of their origins, to preserve and even reintroduce some of the features and traditions of Swedish culture (St. Lucia, the midsummer majstång) and to organize classes for study of the Swedish language. With the advent of mass air travel VASA, which now had many lodges in Sweden, also began to regard itself as a link between Americans of Swedish origin and their ancestral homeland and to be a source of information on contemporary Sweden.
The Grand Lodge, as the national organization is designated, established the position of cultural officer for the national, district, and local lodges. It initiated a program of furnishing source material such as motion pictures and tapes on modern Sweden. Scholarships have been provided for young Swedish Americans to pursue higher education and financial assistance for the study of Swedish. A number of district lodges have established Vasa parks. VASA has no central office but it has established its Archives in Bishop Hill, Illinois. Bertil Winstrom, a past grand master, was the driving force. The archives building was dedicated in 1974 and has recently been substantially expanded.
In recent years some of the local VASA lodges have also reorga­nized
their orientation and practices, simplified the elaborate ritual, welcomed guests, established auxiliary activity clubs to which non-members (up to fifty percent) may belong, and initiated pro­grams
to support financially Swedish-American organizations, institutions, and causes designed to preserve the story—the saga of Swedish immigration to North America and of Swedish America for the coming generations. Beneficiary organizations include the Swedish-American Historical Society with its office at North Park College in Chicago, the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia. Drott Lodge No. 168 in Washington, D.C., to which the writer belongs, has had a program since 1985 and has contributed, in addition to donations to charities and Nordic objectives, over $10,000 to various Swedish-American causes.
The lodges in Sweden have recognized that the VASA Order provides a means for re-establishing and retaining contact with their countrymen and relatives in North America. For a number of years they have sponsored summer festivities at Skansen in Stockholm and elsewhere in the country celebrating the story of Swedish immigra­tion
to the "Great Land in the West." Since the 1960s the Swedish lodges have sponsored a program whereby an American of Swedish origin is selected as "The Swedish American of the Year" for his or her contributions in cementing and strengthening relations between Swedes in the homeland and their countrymen and descendants in the United States. Such members of the Swedish-American Historical Society as Nils William Olsson, who may well be called "the grand old man of Swedish America," and H. Arnold Barton, the prolific and scholarly author of many books on Swedish America as well as Sweden itself, have received this award, along with the recently deceased ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, whose easy-to-use Field-Guide to the Birds has inspired and instructed millions of bird­watchers
throughout the world.
It is apparent from the forgoing that VASA, in addition to its mutual benefit and social roles, has made other highly significant contributions to Swedish America. Its extensive and widespread membership, its publication The Vasa Star (Wasastjärnan) reaching thousands of families, its district and national conventions facilitating contacts and visits among numerous local lodges have created a sense of identity among Swedish Americans and helped for what might be considered to a degree a Swedish-American nationality.
Yet the statistics are not encouraging and continue to show a gradual erosion of VASA's membership, perhaps inevitable as intermarriage and assimilation continue apace and the Swedish-American birthrate remains low. In 1996, its centennial year, VASA has some 24,000 members (18,500 in the United States, 900 in Canada, and 4,500 in Sweden) and 197 local lodges in the U.S., thirteen in Canada, and forty-eight in Sweden as well as thirty-five children's clubs. Many small lodges, however, struggle to survive; and many of them do not have the personnel and financial resources to provide interesting and stimulating programs and activities to win and retain new members—and therefore continue in the old pattern of being a ritualistic, coffee-drinking association of graying Swedish Americans.
3
Local Swedish-American societies and organizations have been in existence, of course, for some time. But the decades after World War II have seen the formation of a plethora of local, state, and even regional Swedish-American ethnic, heritage, cultural, and social organizations around the country. To what extent do these organiza­tions
reflect the younger generations—a different type of Swedish American—than does the VASA membership? To what extent do they include those individuals who are also VASA members? Some twenty-five years ago the Swedish Council of America was formed as an umbrella organization to "bring into a cooperative relationship all organizations that work to celebrate the Swedish heritage in the United States and to strengthen the cultural relationship between Sweden and America." In 1992, the Council had some 119 affiliated organizations and its quarterly periodical Sweden & America was reaching some 30,000 Swedish-American households around the country.
The ultimate question remains: Will with the passage of time most of the various primarily ethnic societies effectively transform themselves into heritage societies? Will they be integrated to form fewer but larger and more inclusive organizations? Will they—or at least a goodly portion of their membership—be absorbed by existing organizations, such as the American-Scandinavian Foundation with headquarters in New York City and affiliates around the country, an impressive exchange program with the five Nordic countries, and an outstanding cultural program? Will new inclusive "Scandinavian-American" societies and organizations gradually supercede and replace the fading particular ethnic ones? Actually in many communi­ties
Nordic societies, unaffiliated with the traditional fraternal groups, describe themselves as "Scandinavian" and have members with roots in any of the five Nordic societies.
Two recent developments merit notice and may be harbingers of the future. Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, long a bastion of Norwegian-American culture and identity, established in 1993 a handsomely endowed professorship in Scandinavian-American studies. In the Pacific Northwest the five Nordic nationalities have established, supported, and maintained the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, with permanent and temporary exhibits, displays, and programs on all five groups as well as on common Nordic events and heritage. Are these developments the harbingers of the future?

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THE VASA ORDER OF AMERICA:: ITS MOLE IN THE SWEDISH-AMERICAN COMMUNITY: 1896-1996
HENRY HANSON
1
This year we have celebrated the 150th anniversary of the beginning of mass Swedish immigration to the United States and Canada. It is therefore appropriate that we note organizations and institutions which played an historical role in the Swedish-American community and facilitated the adaptation and assimilation of the immigrant into a new society and culture. It goes without saying that—although most of us have not directly experienced it—immigra­tion
was a traumatic experience.
Two institutions constituted the pillars that enabled the immigrant to cope with the problems and difficulties encountered in the new milieu. The first was the Church, primarily the Augustana Lutheran Synod but also including the Swedish Mission Covenant, the Baptists, Methodists, as well as the Scandinavian units of the Salvation Army. Except for the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Salvation Army units, the "Swedish" churches have merged with their American counterparts. The Augustana Lutheran Synod, by far the largest Swedish-American ecclesiastical body, became part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC) in 1962, which in turn expanded in 1987 to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) with about six million members, embracing all of the Lutheran persuasion except for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and some smaller groups.
The fraternal society constituted the second pillar. To a degree its role has not been fully recognized, in part because of the hostility between the churches and the fraternal societies. The Church in principle opposed secret societies with quasi-religious rituals. In addition it invariably regarded the social aspects of such societies as worldly if not downright sinful.
By 1880 the majority of newcoming Swedish immigrants were no longer family units as in the preceding decades but teenage boys and girls, the children of tenant farmers (torpare) and agricultural and industrial workers. These new immigrants gravitated in large numbers to the industrial cities of the Northeast and Middle West—at the same time the East Coast in particular was swarming with immigrants in increasing numbers from non-Nordic countries, from Southern and Eastern Europe. The boys in large numbers entered the building and mechanical trades and the girls, domestic service in the homes of well-to-do Yankees. Furthermore, many of the post-1880 immigrants came from a different Sweden and society than their predecessors who had settled for the most part in rural areas of the Middle West. These newcomers were influenced, at least some of them, by those liberal and socialist ideas, including anti-clericalism, which then were beginning to infiltrate Swedish society. As a consequence, many of them were less church-oriented than their predecessors had been. While the churches had established parishes and congregations in the cities of the Midwest and to an extent on the East Coast, they were more effective in the rural areas and small towns of the Midwest, where their congregations were the center of Swedish-American life—both religious and social. By the same token, one should not minimize the role urban churches played in the lives of single boys and girls.
The ethnic fraternal societies in the urban areas fulfilled two vital needs of the immigrants. On the one hand, in an era before the development of the welfare state with its economic benefits, the fraternal societies were mutual benefit organizations providing modest health and death subsidies to members in need. At the time of its fiftieth anniversary in 1946, VASA had provided some $7,408,000 in sick benefits and $1,828,990 in death benefits to its members. With the coming of the New Deal and later the Great Society—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Aid to Dependent Children, as well as the improved economic well-being of most Swedish Americans—the social welfare aspect of the individual lodge had become insignificant.
The ethnic fraternal society had another function—a social and recreational one. It is true that the parish church had a social role, providing a place where Swedish immigrants could gather, meet other Swedes, speak their own language with its beautiful, lilting accent without being regarded as "foreigners" or "greenhorns" by the Yankees and English-speaking immigrants such as the Irish. But the social life of the churches had a strong religious tone and in confor­mity
with the prevailing religious and moral atmosphere of the period, a narrow and frequently intolerant attitude towards numerous social activities such as dancing, card-playing, drama, and above all alcoholic beverages, even when consumed in moderation—all of which were regarded at the least as worldly and distracting, if not indeed as devices of the devil. In addition, the worship of the churches in those days had a stern, Spartan character. Even the Augustana Lutheran Synod, which because of its sense of history loyally adhered to the creeds, the liturgy and traditions of the historic Church, had a marked low-church, pietistic and puritan character. Everything was black, somber, and serious; and fire-and-brimstone not infrequently dominated the lengthy sermons. The lodge with its social activities—dances, plays, poetry, as well as secular music and song—filled a void in the hard lives of the immigrants and provided some color and ceremony and an atmosphere where the immigrants could continue their Old-World peasant (bonde) customs and "have a good time."
The VASA Order of America is the largest Swedish fraternal organization in the United States. It is probably the largest "Swedish" organization in America. It may be exceeded in numbers by the Evangelical Covenant Church, which has not merged with any American ecclesiastical body but which has increasingly become Americanized because of inter-marriage and evangelism and no longer regards itself as "Swedish."
VASA was not, however, the first Swedish fraternal organization in the United States. It was established in 1896 in New Haven, Connecticut. But previous to this, the Svithiod Order was organized in 1880 and the Viking Order, in 1890. These societies were largely confined to the Midwest, particularly Illinois, and never really attained a large or widespread membership, although they continue to exist. Actually the first Swedish secular organization on these shores was the Swedish Society of New York, established in 1836 and still in existence.
At the end of the 1880s there were in Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania several independent local Swedish societies, loosely federated in "The Combined Scandinavian Society of America." It had made little progress and was disbanded at its meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1890. In 1895 several Swedish mutual benefit societies in Connecticut held exploratory meetings in New Haven and ultimately organized in 1896 what would become District Lodge No. 1 of the VASA Order of America. In 1897 a committee met to organize a "grand lodge," with national pretensions; but by that time only two lodges (Norden in Hartford and Kronan in Waterbury) of the six original local ones remained committed to establishing a national lodge. It seems that the dissenting local bodies feared that their financial resources would come under the control of the national organization. Nils Pearson of New Britain, Connecticut, born in this country to immigrant parents, became the first grand master and is regarded as the "grand old man" of the VASA Order of America because of his unrelenting determination to organize these local Swedish mutual benefit societies into a national organization and because of his resolute defense of the "Swedish" character of the new organization. In the following decade VASA spread beyond Connecti­cut
and by 1910 had some 10,000 members in six districts: Connecti­cut,
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Northern New England.
Around 1910 the Swedish immigrant community reached its peak. That year there were some 650,000 Swedish-born Americans; and the immigrant press—some sixty weekly newspapers and 230 biweekly or monthly publications—had a circulation of over 600,000. Fanned by the press and with charismatic leaders such as Johan Enander of Chicago, the Swedes and their children became conscious of their identity as a distinct "nationality," as Swedish Americans. In 1930 the Swedish element, both Swedish-born and their children, reached its zenith, close to 1,500,000. VASA also grew apace; in 1929 it had 72,000 members in seventeen districts and 438 local lodges.
In 1921 Helga Hoving, the Danish-born wife of Dr. Johannes Hoving—a Swedo-Finn and outspoken champion of "Swedish-ness"—recognized that children were the key to the future of VASA. She therefore organized the order's first "barnklubb" at St. Erik's Lodge in New York City as well as three "barnresor" (children's trips) to Sweden in 1924,1929, and 1934. And Dr. Hoving himself, realizing the value of establishing organizational ties with the homeland in order to foster greater pride among Swedish Americans in their ancestral homeland and to reinforce the Swedishness of VASA, took the initiative in establishing the order's first lodge in Sweden. This took place in Göteborg on the west coast, the second largest city in the country and the place from which a great majority of the emigrants had embarked for America.
Dramatic as the growth of VASA was, it is apparent that only a small fraction of the Swedish-American population actually belonged to a Swedish-American fraternal society of some kind—a liberal estimate of the total number is 100,000. In contrast, the Augustana Lutheran Synod, by far the largest and most influential Swedish-American institution, had 238,385 confirmed members in 1930. Estimates are that possibly about forty percent of the Swedish-American population had some contact with a Swedish-American church or religious organization.
With World War I and the anti-foreign hysteria of the early 1920s, use of the Swedish language began to decline. The Swedish-American churches, particularly the Augustana Synod, long a bastion of Swedish culture, began to go over to English in their religious services and Sunday schools in order to retain the loyalty and support of the younger generation, increasingly monolingual with only a rudimentary knowledge of Swedish. On the other hand, the local VASA lodges, particularly in the Northeast where the post-World-War-I immigrants tended to settle, remained faithful to the Swedish language in the conduct of their affairs. But even VASA had to recognize the inevitable trend towards English. In 1923 it gave local lodges permission to use the English language in their business meetings if the members so wished.
The Great Depression, which began in 1929, with its horrendous economic consequences (huge unemployment, reduced workweeks and wages) adversely affected VASA; and by 1934 its membership had declined from 72,000 to 57,000. Moreover, during the first half of the century and particularly after 1920, Swedish Americans and their children had been generally accepted by the "native" predominantly Protestant Anglo-Saxon stock, who recognized the basic similarities of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon values and preferred the Scandinavians to the hordes of Latin and Southern European Roman Catholics who simultaneously were inundating the United States. Swedish immi­grants
learned English relatively quickly and adapted with ease to the "American" way of life. In addition they were fervent Protestants and strongly anti-Roman Catholic, conscious of their heritage as heirs of the Thirty Years and the Polish wars.
In the aftermath of World War II, the suburbanization of America, and an expanding prosperous economy, the ethnic community eroded rapidly. The Augustana Lutheran Synod, long considered a bastion of Swedish culture, values, and identity, merged with the newly created Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1962, along with the Finns, some Danes, and many of the Americans of German background. In addition
b
y this time the Swedes and particularly their American-born generations had to a large degree "achieved" the American dream by entering the professions, rising in the business and corporate worlds to high position and finally intermarrying with native Protestant Americans. With post-war prosperity and such developments as health insurance, the mutual benefit aspect of the order's function diminished in importance.
2
Had VASA now fulfilled its destiny and would it slowly fade away into the shadows of history?
Ethnic consciousness was to experience a revival among most groups and nationalities in America during the 1960s. Perhaps this was in part a reaction to the "black is beautiful" thrust of the race question. But it also stemmed from the impact of views prevalent among many sociologists and historians of immigration, of the mosaic theory of ethnicity on public attitudes: Immigrants were not to be persuaded and dragooned into discarding their ethnic traditions in order to become "English-speaking Americans" but rather were encouraged to retain their ethnic identity; American society would assume the form of a vast mosaic rather than a melting pot. At any rate the third and fourth generations, securely integrated into American society, no longer half ashamed of their grandparents' lilting accents and such customs as "lutfisk" at Christmas, began to develop an interest in their roots and in the achievements of their forebears in America.
Under the pressure of these social and demographic factors and concerned about the marginal interest among its young people in the lodges and their activities, VASA slowly began to alter its character. Already in 1954 the order had expanded eligibility for membership to the other Scandinavian peoples and spouses. Now it began gradually to transform itself into a "heritage" society—to make Americans with Swedish or Nordic roots more conscious of their origins, to preserve and even reintroduce some of the features and traditions of Swedish culture (St. Lucia, the midsummer majstång) and to organize classes for study of the Swedish language. With the advent of mass air travel VASA, which now had many lodges in Sweden, also began to regard itself as a link between Americans of Swedish origin and their ancestral homeland and to be a source of information on contemporary Sweden.
The Grand Lodge, as the national organization is designated, established the position of cultural officer for the national, district, and local lodges. It initiated a program of furnishing source material such as motion pictures and tapes on modern Sweden. Scholarships have been provided for young Swedish Americans to pursue higher education and financial assistance for the study of Swedish. A number of district lodges have established Vasa parks. VASA has no central office but it has established its Archives in Bishop Hill, Illinois. Bertil Winstrom, a past grand master, was the driving force. The archives building was dedicated in 1974 and has recently been substantially expanded.
In recent years some of the local VASA lodges have also reorga­nized
their orientation and practices, simplified the elaborate ritual, welcomed guests, established auxiliary activity clubs to which non-members (up to fifty percent) may belong, and initiated pro­grams
to support financially Swedish-American organizations, institutions, and causes designed to preserve the story—the saga of Swedish immigration to North America and of Swedish America for the coming generations. Beneficiary organizations include the Swedish-American Historical Society with its office at North Park College in Chicago, the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia. Drott Lodge No. 168 in Washington, D.C., to which the writer belongs, has had a program since 1985 and has contributed, in addition to donations to charities and Nordic objectives, over $10,000 to various Swedish-American causes.
The lodges in Sweden have recognized that the VASA Order provides a means for re-establishing and retaining contact with their countrymen and relatives in North America. For a number of years they have sponsored summer festivities at Skansen in Stockholm and elsewhere in the country celebrating the story of Swedish immigra­tion
to the "Great Land in the West." Since the 1960s the Swedish lodges have sponsored a program whereby an American of Swedish origin is selected as "The Swedish American of the Year" for his or her contributions in cementing and strengthening relations between Swedes in the homeland and their countrymen and descendants in the United States. Such members of the Swedish-American Historical Society as Nils William Olsson, who may well be called "the grand old man of Swedish America," and H. Arnold Barton, the prolific and scholarly author of many books on Swedish America as well as Sweden itself, have received this award, along with the recently deceased ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, whose easy-to-use Field-Guide to the Birds has inspired and instructed millions of bird­watchers
throughout the world.
It is apparent from the forgoing that VASA, in addition to its mutual benefit and social roles, has made other highly significant contributions to Swedish America. Its extensive and widespread membership, its publication The Vasa Star (Wasastjärnan) reaching thousands of families, its district and national conventions facilitating contacts and visits among numerous local lodges have created a sense of identity among Swedish Americans and helped for what might be considered to a degree a Swedish-American nationality.
Yet the statistics are not encouraging and continue to show a gradual erosion of VASA's membership, perhaps inevitable as intermarriage and assimilation continue apace and the Swedish-American birthrate remains low. In 1996, its centennial year, VASA has some 24,000 members (18,500 in the United States, 900 in Canada, and 4,500 in Sweden) and 197 local lodges in the U.S., thirteen in Canada, and forty-eight in Sweden as well as thirty-five children's clubs. Many small lodges, however, struggle to survive; and many of them do not have the personnel and financial resources to provide interesting and stimulating programs and activities to win and retain new members—and therefore continue in the old pattern of being a ritualistic, coffee-drinking association of graying Swedish Americans.
3
Local Swedish-American societies and organizations have been in existence, of course, for some time. But the decades after World War II have seen the formation of a plethora of local, state, and even regional Swedish-American ethnic, heritage, cultural, and social organizations around the country. To what extent do these organiza­tions
reflect the younger generations—a different type of Swedish American—than does the VASA membership? To what extent do they include those individuals who are also VASA members? Some twenty-five years ago the Swedish Council of America was formed as an umbrella organization to "bring into a cooperative relationship all organizations that work to celebrate the Swedish heritage in the United States and to strengthen the cultural relationship between Sweden and America." In 1992, the Council had some 119 affiliated organizations and its quarterly periodical Sweden & America was reaching some 30,000 Swedish-American households around the country.
The ultimate question remains: Will with the passage of time most of the various primarily ethnic societies effectively transform themselves into heritage societies? Will they be integrated to form fewer but larger and more inclusive organizations? Will they—or at least a goodly portion of their membership—be absorbed by existing organizations, such as the American-Scandinavian Foundation with headquarters in New York City and affiliates around the country, an impressive exchange program with the five Nordic countries, and an outstanding cultural program? Will new inclusive "Scandinavian-American" societies and organizations gradually supercede and replace the fading particular ethnic ones? Actually in many communi­ties
Nordic societies, unaffiliated with the traditional fraternal groups, describe themselves as "Scandinavian" and have members with roots in any of the five Nordic societies.
Two recent developments merit notice and may be harbingers of the future. Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, long a bastion of Norwegian-American culture and identity, established in 1993 a handsomely endowed professorship in Scandinavian-American studies. In the Pacific Northwest the five Nordic nationalities have established, supported, and maintained the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, with permanent and temporary exhibits, displays, and programs on all five groups as well as on common Nordic events and heritage. Are these developments the harbingers of the future?